Seven Paly students will compete in the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad, the fifth highest total of qualifying students nationwide.

Freshmen John Boyle and Kevin Hu, sophomores Lynnelle Ye and Nikhil Bhargava, juniors Justin Holmgren and Eric Chung, and senior Colleen Lee made Paly history in qualifying for the USAMO. Along with sending one of the largest group of students nationwide out of any public high school, Paly is also the top school, public, magnet or private, west of the Mississippi by number of qualifying students, according to instructional supervisor of Mathematics Radu Toma.

Only about 500 students nationwide qualified for the USAMO, making Paly’s seven competitors an unusually large proportion of the total.

Other schools that tied with Paly for the most students qualifying in California were Saratoga High School and Lynbrook High School, each with seven students.

The four high schools that had more qualifying students were Philips Exeter Academy (17 students) and Stuyvesant High (10) and magnet schools Montgomery Blair High School (10) and the Academy Of Advanced Science & Technology (9), all of which were on the East Coast.

Last year, Paly had three students qualify, a record for Paly in ten years of competition; two of these students, Ye and Lee, qualified this year as well.

The USAMO is a six-question, two-day, 9-hour essay/proof examination, according to the website of The Mathematical Association of America. The 12 top scoring USAMO students are invited to a two-day Olympiad Awards Ceremony in Washington, DC, and six of these students will represent America in the International Mathematical Olympiad, according to the site.

The seven Paly students first had to achieve a passing score on the American Mathematics Competition (AMC), a contest administered to the 290 students in the upper math lane. Those who passed (just two percent of those who took the AMC nationwide) went on to take the American Invitational Mathematics Examination, and the one percent of AIME takers nationwide qualified for the USAMO. 35 students at Paly passed the AMC, and twenty percent of these test-takers qualified for the USAMO – a much larger percentage than the one percent threshold for the nation.

Boyle, Hu, Ye, Bhargava, Holmgren, Chung, and Lee will take the USAMO at Paly or at Gunn on April 29 and 30.

Chung was about 15 points away from qualifying last year for the USAMO. He’s pleased about his result this year, but realizes that the USAMO is an incredibly difficult contest.

“If I’m lucky, I’ll get one or two of the problems,” Chung said.

The Paly students were excited about qualifying, but even Ye, who qualified last year, is pessimistic about her chances of reaching the IMO.

“There is no way [I’ll qualify],” Ye said. “I’ve met the people who will make it, and they are much smarter than me.”

Ye is only a sophomore, but she is already the president of the Math Club at Paly. Paly math teacher and former instructional supervisor Suzanne Antink cites Ye as one of the catalysts for the jump in USAMO qualifiers.

“Lynelle [Ye] is a dynamite problem solver,” Antink said. “Each meeting, she can demonstrate a cool solution to a very difficult problem.”

Antink points to the Math Clubs at Palo Alto middle schools as the reason for the increase in qualifiers.

“People realize it’s fun, earlier,” Antink said. “It really has to start at a young ago. When I was teaching in middle school, I started math counts, and that has helped a lot as well,”

Toma voiced his respect for the qualifiers this year.

“Their amazing talent, dedication and hard work in mathematics places them on what is with no doubt one of the most prestigious lists of exceptional high-school students in the country,” Toma said.

He is not only excited about this years’ class; Toma is also looking to the next few years for even more success.

“The variation between the talent pool from one year and the next is slim,” Toma said. “It’s the commitment of this particular group in the math club that makes the real difference.”

Toma hopes that this commitment and interest will continue to build. The momentum has already kicked in, and he hopes we will continue to see large growth in USAMO qualifiers in the future.

Toma is ecstatic about the huge number of qualifiers this year.

“I’m thrilled to pieces,” Toma said. “This is my best day so far this year.”